1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communication system and more particularly, to a method for reporting activation status of feature service in a mobile communication system that can report activation status of feature services such as termination conversion and termination rejection to a subscriber.
2. Description of the Background Art
The current mobile communication system provides many feature services to subscribers. Among the services, the termination conversion and transmission rejection service are feature services for preventing a call termination to a mobile terminal of the subscriber and the subscriber activates or inactivates the operation of the corresponding service after registering the use of the feature service to the service provider. Therefore, the subscriber can reduce interruption of a telephone call for a short time before the feature service is inactivated before by activating the above feature service on a particular condition or for a particular object.
Activation or inactivation of the conventional feature service is done by a subscriber using an feature code or by a service provider in accordance with requests of the subscriber or an object in terms of operation. At this time the feature code is a code designated for recognizing the feature service and the code can be designated in each mobile communication service provider.
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram illustrating a conventional mobile communication system, and FIG. 2 is a view showing the method for activating the feature service in the mobile communication system of FIG. 1.
A subscriber transmits a feature code corresponding to the feature service which will be activated through the Mobile Station (MS) 10 and base station 20 to the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) 30 (1-a). The MSC 30 checks the feature code by analyzing the origination number dialed by the subscriber and then transmits the feature service processing request signal FEATREQ (feature request) to the Home Location Register (HLR) 40 (1-b).
The HLR 40 analyzes the feature code transmitted from the MSC 30 and makes sure to which service the corresponding feature code is applicable and whether the feature code is a code for activating or inactivating the feature service.
If the kind and activation type of the feature service are identified, the HLR 40 stores the status information of the corresponding feature service in the data base (DB) and then transmits the response signal featreq on the feature code processing request to the MSC 30 (1-c). At this time, the response signal featreq includes a feature code processing result and a output type (Tone or announcement) of the feature code processing result. The HLR 40 conducts failure processing in case the feature code which the subscriber transmitted is not a valid code.
Therefore, the MSC 30 analyzes the response signal featreq from the HLR 40 and reports the feature code processing result in the form of the Tone or announcement to the MS 10 by using a feature confirmation (1-d).
On the other hand, if the status of the feature service is changed by the subscriber, the HLR 40 transmits the status information of the feature service to the Visitor Location Register (VLR) 50 wherein the subscriber is positioned in accordance with the kind of the feature service.
Namely, as shown in FIG. 2, the HLR 40 reports the status information of the feature service by transmitting an authority information command (QUALDIR: Qualification Directive) to the VLR 50 in case that the status information (activation/inactivation) of the feature service is stored (1-e). The VLR 50 updates the status information of the feature service and transmits the response signal qualdir to the HLR 40 (1-f). Also, the VLR 50 ends a storing process of the feature service information by transmitting the QUALDIR to the MSC 30 and then receiving the response signal qualdir corresponding to the QUALDIR from the MSC 30 (1-g and 1-h).
Meanwhile, the activation or inactivation of the feature service in the mobile communication network can be processed by a customer management system of the service provider as well as the subscriber. The customer management system requests the change of the feature service information using a protocol defined between the customer management system and HLR 40. The HLR 40 changes the corresponding feature service information in the subscriber DB, and then reports the processing results to the customer management system.
Therefore, the MSC 30 and HLR 40 provides the corresponding feature service to the subscriber in accordance with the changed feature service status in case that subscriber is requested to originate or terminate a call.
A subscriber can prevent interruption from telephone calls for a while at a certain time and location by setting the activation or inactivation status of the feature service using the feature code. Even if a certain object or condition of the subscriber ends and the subscriber is able to receive phone calls again, the subscriber occasionally forgets that he or she activated the feature service and does not inactivate the feature service again. Therefore, conventionally, there was a problem that a subscriber can not get on line until the corresponding service is inactivated recognizing the activation status of the feature service.